bike culture blogged

Snow came to Seattle today; big, fat flakes blanketed all of Capitol Hill. In a town that really doesn’t cope well with snow, riding a bike in the middle of the confusion is probably a dumb idea……and I am nothing if not attracted to dumb ideas. Time to pull out the Redline Conquest Carbon. I rode to Belltown and the Pike Place Market, then to the U-District to visit Recycled Cycles. Then I rode to Gasworks Park where opportunistic sledders enticed me to ride down the hill. It only took me 2 crashes to get it right.

Later on I switched off to my Davidson 20incher because it has a disc brake. But I really wish I still had my Bianchi titanium MTB. Dropbar, SID fork, disc brakes, and those lethal Schwalbe Ice Spiker Pro tires….360 tungsten core, aluminium spikes per tire give ridiculous authority on ice and packed snow. My latest equipment fantasy is to build up a 29er version of that bike. Possibly custom titanium, but I think perhaps Davidson Cycles needs a break from my harebrained dream machines. Among production frames, I like the Trek Superfly, Specialized S-works 29er, and the Giant XTC Composite 29er. All of those bikes come in a size roughly small enough for my standover. Sadly, I probably won’t have that project complete for this winter. Tomorrow all that snow will have turned to slush with hard clumps tripping up the the bike lanes, or worse the packed snow may refreeze. That’s when spiked tires will really be missed.

Schwalbe now makes the Ice Spiker Pro in a 29er size….those will surely be the stuff of nightmares.